Kazuo SHIRAGA (1924-2008) Sakuhin, 1962 Oil on canvas Signed and dated 1962 lower right 130 x 162.5 cm PROVENANCE : - Artist's studio - Galerie STADLER, Paris (label on back) - Private collection, Nice NOTE: - Several radical avant-garde art movements emerged in Japan in the 1950s, including the Gutai ("body as instrument") movement, a shifting group from 1955 to 1972, theorized and founded by Yoshihara Jirô (1905-1972). - Gutai painting is born of a living gesture, densified by the force of "chi", a vital and spiritual energy whose intensity manifests itself in shapes and colors laid down in a rapid, impulsive and carnal gesture. A performance art that places as much importance on the physical action that presides over the creation of the work, as on the result itself, revealing the density of the original material. - Kazuo Shiraga, one of the emblematic figures of Gutaï, of which he has been a member since 1955, advocates a physical rediscovery of the elements: "Gutai art does not transform or divert matter; it brings it to life". After the abyss of defeat in the Second World War and the disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was necessary to overcome the trauma of horror and achieve resilience. "My art is not influenced by my experience at the front. I only saw people covered in blood. I only saw the victims of war, and Osaka completely devastated. Many people, smeared with blood, soot and mud, came to Osaka Castle for help... I saw many bombed-out landscapes, people wailing, others immobilized, traumatized, people bleeding, people even on the verge of death. These memories materialized in my work" (in Ming Tiampo, op.cit., 2003, p. 177). - Kazuo Shiraga deposits an abundance of colored oil on a canvas placed on the floor, then, clinging to a rope installed on the ceiling of his studio, he glides at will with his feet over the surface with a real impression of velocity. "I tried it bare-handed, with the fingers of my hand. Then, convinced that I had to go further and further, I went further and further, and as I went, I found the feet. That was it! Peindre avec les pieds" (in Shiraga Kazuo, "Koi koo5o" (The very act), Clllui, no. 3, October 1955). - Kazuo Shiraga's rapid movements follow a precise, deliberate rhythm, tracing complex networks of interlacing and dynamic grooves that transcribe "chi". Combined with the effects of gravitational force, this pictorial material overkill is invested with all the bodily energy and spiritual forces at play. The viewer enters the beyond-matter of a painting that has become action and pure expressive outpouring, an aesthetic of surpassing and testimony to an encounter between body and matter. - 1962, the year our canvas was created, was a turning point for Shiraga, whose international career finally took off. The Stadler gallery in Paris hosted his first solo exhibition outside Japan - a group show had taken place in 1959 - after he had been discovered by art critic Michel Tapié in Osaka in 1957. This painting was certainly one of them (faded label on back of Galerie Stadler, 51 rue de Seine - 75006 Paris. Probable exhibition: "Shiraga", Galerie Stadler, Paris, January 26 - February 22, 1962). Prior registration is required to bid on this lot. Please contact us on +33 (0)1.40.20.02.82 or [email protected]. As a registration is required to bid on this lot, please contact us : +33 (0)1.40.20.02.82 or [email protected]